


A Walk in the Woods

by mahoni



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 10000-30000 words, Action/Adventure, Angst, Case Story, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-12
Updated: 2007-07-12
Packaged: 2017-10-03 07:45:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahoni/pseuds/mahoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Strange things are afoot in the forests of southern Missouri.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Walk in the Woods

"Dude, where are you?"

"I don't know yet." Sam tucked the phone against his shoulder and switched on the GPS. "Where are you?"

"Not sure yet either." Dean's voice was muffled, and the phone crackled. "I'm still on a river. I don't know if it's the same river we were on before, though."

Sam's position came up on the GPS screen, and he zoomed the map out to show where he was relative to where he wanted to be. He sighed.

"I'm about twenty miles west of the river, in the middle of nowhere."

"Yeah, I'm south, same distance. Still on the Eleven Point, but way the hell downstream. Did you see what hit us?"

Sam touched the lump on the back of his head and winced. "No. I didn't see a thing."

"So much for Plan A," Dean said. "If we start heading back now, we can get maybe halfway back to where we started before nightfall. Cover the rest of the distance in the morning, and try to figure out what we're dealing with then."

"I guess. At least if this thing sticks with its pattern, next time it'll just try to scare us instead of whacking us on the head." Sam looked up through the dense forest canopy at the sunny afternoon sky. A chain of hills rose and plummeted steeply between him and the river, and he was not looking forward to covering the distance on foot. He dropped his backpack and crouched down to put away the GPS. "You know, I can't believe we agreed to do this in exchange for free beer and pie."

"Hey! You make us sound so cheap. We're doing this because they were nice people who asked us for help."

"After feeding us lots of amazing pie and really good beer."

"That was good beer, wasn't it?" He could hear Dean grinning. "Who'd've thought a guy who runs a backwoods shithole motel called Kamp Kwitcherbitchin would be a connoisseur of imported beer? And that apple pie -"

"Not Apple Pie," Sam said. He pulled the gun from his waistband and checked the clip. It was still loaded with silver bullets. His holy water, hunting knife, and everything else he'd packed were intact, too. Good to know that whatever they were dealing with wasn't smart enough to disarm him. Or maybe not; maybe it was just so badass that it didn't need to bother.

"What?"

"That's what it's called," he said. "Not Apple Pie. Because it's made with zucchini instead of apples." He shouldered the pack and stood, and started down the hill.

"Zucchini? _Zucchini? _ Come on, Sam. I know what apple pie tastes like, and that was definitely apple pie."

"Zucchini," Sam said. "I helped Mrs. Kleiner chop up a batch for her next round of pies while you were out in the shed with Gene admiring his beer collection."

For a moment all Sam could hear through the phone were the rustle of leaves and the snap of twigs as Dean pushed through riverside brush.

"Why would you tell me that?" Dean said finally. "Zucchini? In pie? That's just wrong. It was -- you just ruined a beautiful pie experience, Sam. Thanks a lot."

Sam laughed, but broke off as he stepped over a moss-covered fallen tree and slipped on loose rocks on the other side. He caught himself and stopped.

"All right. I can't walk and talk. I'm hanging up now."

"Yeah, yeah," Dean said. "Fine. Whatever. Now that you've shot my day all to hell with your zucchini. Check in every hour, jerk."

Sam pocketed the phone and started grudgingly down the hill again.

The thing was, Gene Kleiner and his mother probably weren't in any danger. Their motel, set off a back highway near the Eleven Point River, was about five miles upstream from a corridor of forest that acted like a landlocked Bermuda Triangle. Campers, hikers and boaters who wandered into the area were attacked by some unseen force and spirited away. Anyone who went back to hunt down their attacker came out scared shitless by horrors they couldn't explain. No one was ever killed, though, and whatever was in that patch of woods left people alone as long as they stayed away.

Still, people were afraid. Sam did understand that; something frightening and unknown was out there, practically in their back yards. And the Kleiners really were nice people, too. Mrs. Kleiner especially -- she was a round, elderly woman who cooked non-stop, brooked no sass from anyone, and kissed Sam on the cheek when he carried her laundry in from the clothesline for her.

So he didn't mind helping out. Being able to help people was one of the very few good things about what he and Dean did, so of course he didn't mind.

That didn't mean he was looking forward to how much his feet and legs were going to ache after walking for twenty frigging miles, though.

*

Hours later, Dean found a low, bare shelf of rock jutting out over the river's edge and parked himself on it. He pulled his boots off and tugged his blue jeans up to his knees, and swished his legs around in the water, letting the icy chill soothe his tired feet and calves. According to his watch, it was time for their third check-in of the day. His phone went off right on cue.

"So," he said. "Is it just me, or do you feel like you're being watched, too?"

Sam sounded breathless on the other end of the line. "Yeah. Since a little while after our last check-in."

"You sound exhausted," Dean said. "Pussy."

"Fuck you," Sam said. "You try climbing up and down hills and in and out of fucking ravines all day. I'm not even close to halfway there."

Dean groaned mentally. At that pace they wouldn't hook up until at least noon tomorrow. "You haven't gotten lost, have you?"

It took a moment for Sam to answer; Dean heard him knock back what sounded like an entire bottle of water.

"No," he said finally. "The GPS is keeping me on track."

"Hah!" Dean kicked water at a cloud of tiny pale flies hovering above the river's surface a few feet away. With dusk falling the bugs were out in force along the river. The only reason Dean wasn't being eaten alive by mosquitoes was because he was covered from head to toe in the evilest, smelliest, most toxic bug spray he'd been able to find at the local Wal-Mart. "I told you we'd need them."

"Yeah, okay," Sam said. "But we still can't keep them. If the Feds track us down through the card we used to buy them, they can reverse GPS us."

"I know." Dean sighed and pulled the sleek, bright yellow, impact resistant, waterproof, international-capable GPS device out of his backpack and switched it on. "But they're so _cool_. I can plot a course to Sweden on this thing."

"Sweden? Dean. Could we maybe focus on what we need to be doing here?"

He shrugged as he worked on calling up a map showing the route from Missouri to Sydney, Australia. "At this point, not much we can do. Just keep our eyes peeled and protect ourselves as best we can tonight."

"Yeah," Sam said. "I guess."

Sam sounded like he had more to say, so Dean let the pause draw out. He gave up on the GPS and switched it off, stashing it in his pack. His back still itched, a prickle running down his spine that told him he was not alone. He hadn't seen anything yet, or heard anything out of place in the forest or in the water, but he knew something was out there. Waiting for nightfall, probably.

Beyond the tall black and white cliffs lining the opposite bank of the river the setting sun turned the sky pink. Despite the reason he was there, despite whatever was lurking in the forest following him and Sam, Dean had to admit this place was nice. He wasn't exactly the outdoorsy type -- he hated getting sunburned, he hated the bugs, he hated the heat, he hated the plant life, he hated not being able to sleep in a bed at night, and he really hated the lack of readily available coffee -- but since he _had_ to be out there, it wasn't so bad. He watched a turtle slide off a rock in the middle of the river and hit the water with a _ploink_, and thought he could halfway imagine coming back to a place like this on purpose sometime.

"Hey," Sam said finally. "You remember that time dad took us camping? I mean, really camping, not for a hunt. And he made popcorn in tin foil on the campfire, and we roasted marshmallows and stuff?"

"Yeah," Dean said. "I was just sort of thinking...yeah. I remember you burned all of your marshmallows and dad made me give you some of mine." He grinned. "And I rolled 'em around in the dirt before I gave them to you."

"Are you serious? So that's why they tasted like shit. You know, I actually thought that was what roasted marshmallows were supposed to taste like until the first time I went camping with Jess."

It wasn't exactly a conversation killer, and a knee-jerk retort was on the tip of Dean's tongue -- _that's because you're a total sucker, dude_ \-- but he didn't say it. He could count on the fingers of one hand the times Sam had talked about Jess, and didn't even need to use his fingers to count the times Sam had mentioned _happy_ memories of her. He found himself holding his breath, waiting to see if Sam would say more.

He didn't, though. "You know what, I'm beat. I think I'm going to stop here, bed down for the night. Check in in the morning, okay?"

The connection died. Dean just sat, with the phone in his lap, watching the river slide by. He listened instinctively for any sign that whatever watched him was getting any closer, but mostly he was thinking, _how stupid is it that I'm glad he met Jess even if only so he could have a damn marshmallow roasted the right way. _

After a minute he shook it off. The sun was going down and he needed to find a place to build a fire and lay out some protection before dark. He slipped his socks and boots back on and stood. Humidity still hung thick in the air, but the million degree heat was finally cooling. He started pushing through the trees that hugged his side of the river, taking a deep breath to clear his head. The air was sweet and clean, carrying the scent of ...

Steak?

It took him a few moments to figure out what he was smelling. The scent of wood smoke, he got right away. But then: yes, that was in fact the smell of grilled steak. And...garlic, and fish cooking in butter...

Either he was coming up on a house, or somebody was camping out in style.

The river took a sharp turn up ahead, and through a break in the trees he could see a gravelly sandbar curving out into the river. He saw a big tent, firelight, and people moving around, and he could hear snatches of conversation over the breeze rustling the trees and the sounds of his own movement through the underbrush.

He stopped just inside the tree line, hidden in the shadows. Two canoes were pulled up on the far side of the gravel bar. One guy, shirtless, in baggy cut-off sweatpants and a ball cap, tossed a line out in the ripples of the river's bend, reeled it slowly back in, and tossed it out again. Two others sat on coolers at a wide, low fire. They had a pair of cooking tripods topped with grill grates, and a huge spread of food laid out on them.

Two things occurred to Dean. The first was that if something sinister was following him and intended to attack sometime in the night, it would be supremely irresponsible to put innocents in harm's way.

The second was that it probably wouldn't hurt to just go talk to these guys for a bit, before he moved on to find a place to camp alone. He could maybe find out what they knew about the weird things that had happened upstream, or if they'd seen anything strange. And if they invited him to eat with them, he could probably spare a little time to eat. No need to be rude and refuse their hospitality.

He moved his gun from his waistband to a side pocket of his pack, leaving it mostly unzippered for easy retrieval. Putting on a relaxed, I'm-a-totally-harmless-and-not-at-all-creepy-stranger face, he stepped out into the glow of the sunset.

*

For all the humidity in the air the area hadn't gotten much rain since spring, so Sam had no trouble finding dry wood for the fire. He set up the wood pile dead center of a relatively flat spot at the crest of a hill, a clear space where the bedrock was too close to the surface for trees to take root. It was a good spot: he wouldn't have to worry about sparks drifting up and setting the trees blazing; and his cell reception wouldn't be blocked by the surrounding hills, in case something happened and he or Dean needed to call each other during the night.

He scrounged up some dried leaves for tinder and tried not to think about the fact that the last time he'd been camping was the first job he and Dean took after Jess died. Back then, despite the missing people, the wendigo stalking them and all of their equipment having been stolen, he'd been distracted by the fact that he'd never, ever get to build a campfire and spend a night beneath the stars with Jess again. At the time he hadn't considered himself the least bit selfish for obsessing about it to the point that the danger and the fear of the people around him felt like an imposition.

By now he could admit that if Jess had been there and had known what was going through his head -- which she would have, because she could seriously read him like a book -- she would have smacked him. The only thing they'd ever really fought about was the way she said he would get so wrapped up in himself that he lost sight of what other people needed, of more important things going on around him.

He froze, mid-thought. _Case in point. _

The tinder he'd stuffed into the heart of his woodpile bloomed at the tip of his match, and Sam found the sudden flare reflected in a pair of eyes across from him.

_Good job, Sam_. He'd been lost in memories of Jess again, concerned only with getting a fire going before night fell. It hadn't occurred to him that, given the circumstances, setting up protection around his campsite should have been the first thing he should do. _Idiot_. Dean would lecture him for _days_ if he found out.

The enormous black dog didn't move, just sat on its haunches gazing at him. Sam couldn't be entirely sure what it was. Could be a demon; hell, it could even be a real dog, although he'd never seen a real dog whose eyes glowed that particular shade of red.

Could be a were-creature, but he hoped to God it wasn't.

He slowly, slowly reached around and drew out his gun. The dog remained perfectly still as Sam brought the gun up and took aim. He found a spot dead center between its eyes --

\-- and then he couldn't pull the trigger. If it was a were-creature, if there was a person lost inside that animal's body, he didn't think he could handle seeing the corpse sprawled out on the ground, staring up at him with dead eyes and blood pooling beneath its skull.

It was stupid, and possibly fatal, but he shifted his aim and shot to injure instead of kill.

The dog didn't even flinch.

"Fuck," Sam said. He sank back onto his heels, almost boneless with relief. If the dog had been flesh and blood he'd have hit it. There was only one other thing he could think of that the dog could be, and it was potentially worse than the other options. He was so damn glad it wasn't anything remotely like Madison, though, he couldn't bring himself to care.

He reached into his backpack with a shaking hand, got a handful of salt, and tossed it across the fire. The apparition wavered and dissolved when the salt hit it, then immediately reformed. It still just sat and stared at him, so on an impulse Sam reached out to it. The icy chill he felt when his hand came into contact with its muzzle didn't surprise him, although the sensation, almost like a memory, of coarse fur and a damp nose against his fingertips did.

He jerked his hand back, clenching it into a fist to warm his suddenly cold fingers. "Okay. Unexpected."

He got the coffee can full of salt out of his pack and, keeping an eye on the dog, started laying out a circle around the fire. The dog let him bring the ends of the circle right up to it; he finished out the circle by pouring a line of salt right through the dog. It poofed out of existence. He waited, but it didn't show up outside the circle again.

He turned, crouched to pick up the lid for the can, and the dog was _right there_. He shouted and fell back, almost landing in the fire. The thing sat inches away, inside the circle with him, staring. Again.

"Son of a bitch," he muttered.

He tried bisecting the circle between himself and the dog, but a split second before he finished the dog vanished and reappeared at his side. He moved to step over the line into the other half of the circle, but the dog sprang to its feet and dodged between his legs before he took half a step. It was a phantom, insubstantial beyond the potential for ghostly cold, but instinct took over and Sam jerked sideways to avoid tripping over it. He ended up stumbling, falling on his ass and scuffing apart the salt line as he went. By the time he sat up and dusted himself off, the dog was beside him again. It lay down with its head on its paws and gazed balefully up at him.

"All right," he said. He capped the coffee can and put it away. "Fine. I'm wasting salt, and you're obviously not going anywhere."

As he finished building up the fire and settled in to eat a sandwich, the dog stayed where it was, always watching him. It was unnerving at first. Black dogs had been around for centuries, in Great Britain, Europe, even in the U.S. They were death omens; people who saw them died soon after. Sitting around in the dark, alone, with an enormous death omen staring at you with glowing red eyes was, pretty much by definition, creepy.

On the other hand, all accounts said that whatever was in these woods did not kill, so he wasn't sure he should take the apparition literally. It could be an illusion designed to scare him, just like other victims had been ultimately scared away.

Plus the thing was so...innocuous. Black dogs weren't agents of death themselves, they were just a warning. And anyway, all it did was lay there beside him. For all its size and freaky eyes, it could have been somebody's pet, escaped from its yard and looking for someone to hang out with.

After a while Sam stretched out, pack under his head and gun in his hand resting on his chest. He looked at the dog.

"You know, for a death omen, you're not bad company." The dog raised its head, eyes glittering in the firelight, ears quirked forward. Sam did not give in to the urge to try to scratch it under its chin, but only barely. "And you don't give me headaches like my usual death visions do, which is a bonus."

The apparition's tail thumped silently on the ground. It rolled over onto its side, stretched, opened its huge jaws in a gaping, tooth-filled yawn, and closed its eyes.

*

The guys were nice, but definitely a little strange. When Dean first stepped out of the forest, the one who was fishing turned around, looked at him and said,

"Oh my god! It's the Bourbeuse Stalker!"

And it all kind of went downhill from there.

Dean fell for the Bourbeuse Stalker spiel hook, line and sinker. They invited him to sit down, have a beer, maybe sample their Special Recipe Steak and Shrimp Buffet. He accepted (of course; it was the polite thing to do) and without any prompting from him they launched into the tale of the Bourbeuse Stalker, who had supposedly migrated south from the Bourbeuse River area leaving a trail of death and destruction in his wake, and who was now terrorizing people on the Eleven Point. Dean figured there probably wasn't a real serial killer out there, but any rumors or local legends could be clues, so he listened and asked questions.

Until the fisherman started laughing and one of the cooks looked at him cockeyed and said,

"Wow, you're _really_ gullible, aren't you," and started laughing, too.

He'd turned down their offer of a beer at first, but when they offered again and launched into the beer song --

"Dough -- the stuff I spend on beer  
Ray -- the guy who sells me beer  
Me -- the one who drinks the beer  
Far -- the distance from my beer  
So -- I'll have another beer  
La -- la la la la la beeeeer!"

\-- he ended up agreeing to one just in self-defense. He didn't drink on the job when he might have to fight or kill something, obviously, so he took a couple sips for show and then pretended to nurse the beer for the rest of the evening.

Only, as the evening wore on, he started to feel drunk anyway. Or at least, really, really relaxed. The food never got done cooking, and the three guys -- whose names he never got -- bounced from ridiculous topic ("A bar of soap is the only bait you need for catfish." "Bullshit." "I caught a ten pound cat just the other day on nothing but soap, dude") to ridiculous topic ("have you heard the story of Hansikin Looprikhan, the blood-thirsty phantom Leprechaun?"). Dean started to think, a little fuzzily, that he needed to move on and find his own place to camp, but he didn't. He told himself _leave_ but he was so comfortable, perched on the cooler by the fire, that he ended up just sitting and listening to their stories instead.

Next thing he knew he was giggling uncontrollably ("It's the mating call of the purple squirrel. 'Purple squirrel! Purple squirrel!'"). Next thing after _that_ he was looking around for extra beer bottles, wondering if he'd managed to drink a twelve pack or two without noticing, because, damn, he was _rocked_.

At some point he looked up and saw the moon high in the sky. Hours had passed, and he had no idea how.

"I gotta go," he said, with some difficulty. His tongue was thick in his mouth. "I gotta thing. A thing after me. Maybe. Don' wan' it to get you guys, so I gotta go."

"You can't go," one said, and stuck a grilling fork in one of the steaks and waved it under Dean's nose. "Steak's done. I made it my super special way -- rubbed it down with olive oil, pepper and fresh garlic, grilled it to just about medium rare. Seriously, this is the best steak you'll ever eat, man. And the shrimp -- I wrapped them in bacon. Smells good, doesn't it?"

"Yep. I mean. Nope." He was salivating like a mad dog. "I gotta go."

But he didn't. He couldn't. The world wobbled like crazy and he was glued to his seat, taken over by a primitive part of his brain that could only think _steeeak. Shriiiiiiimp. Mmm. _

So he sat there and watched them argue over who would get which cuts of steak, and felt drunker and drunker despite not drinking a drop more of anything, much less anything alcoholic. When he found himself lying in the sand with rocks digging into his shoulder and hip and the fire too hot on his face he wondered hazily if they had drugged him. He couldn't move; he could barely think; all he could do was giggle like a freak at everything these guys did.

The last thing he remembered was the fisherman staggering around the campground howling drunkenly, "I'M the purple squirrel! I'm the SQUIRREL!" Dean laughed helplessly, relentlessly, until he literally couldn't breathe, and before he passed out he thought, _you dumb shit. If Sam finds out about this you are never going to live it down. _

*

Sam looked at his watch; it was after nine o'clock.

"God dammit, Dean." He hit speed dial, listened to Dean's voicemail pick up again, and just about threw the phone at the nearest tree.

He'd slept in fits and starts all night, the black dog a still, silent, but weirdly comforting presence. He woke up finally with the rising sun in his eyes and the black dog gone. Being alone in the morning light gave him a chill he hadn't felt all night, despite sharing his camp with an omen of death. Now that the dog was gone, it was like the clock had started ticking.

He broke camp quickly and got started toward the river as soon as he could, calling to check in with Dean as soon as he was on his way.

The first few times Dean didn't answer, Sam didn't think much of it. Dean could still be asleep; he could have turned his phone off overnight to conserve the battery; he could be in the throes of a coffee-less morning and not yet human enough to answer the phone. He left bitchy messages along the lines of "answer the damn phone, asshole," and waited for Dean to call him back.

Dean didn't call back, though, and it didn't take long for Sam to start worrying. By three hours on he was frantic. He started to wonder if they had completely misjudged the danger. Before they had headed down the river to check this thing out, they'd gone into town for supplies and a little supplementary research. While Dean did the shopping Sam hit the tiny local library. They didn't have microfiche or any kind of online database, but they'd had a collection of newspaper clippings about the Eleven Point Mystery. Everything he'd found in those clippings backed up what Gene Kleiner and his mother had said: weird shit happened, but nobody ever got killed.

Now he was wishing he'd taken the time to dig deeper. What if people had died, but those reports weren't included in the collection? The river was a draw for people looking for good fishing and weekend float trips; what if the locals decided that advertising the deaths would keep people away, and hushed them up?

They always went into any kind of job prepared for real danger, but Sam knew he, at least, hadn't honestly expected to run into anything serious. If Dean had been thinking the same way, and had let his guard down at the wrong moment -- it would be Sam's fault.

He looked down from the top of the hill. At the bottom of it the land finally flattened out into a wide flood plain covered with untended farm fields. In the distance the trees followed the lazy, curving line of the river, parallel with towering bluffs. _About time, _ he thought.

He wasn't sure he was going to make it, though. Something was following him again. It wasn't like yesterday, when all he had was a suspicion, a sensation of being watched. About an hour ago he'd heard something, far away, crashing through the forest. It had gotten closer and closer, the sound of its pursuit increasingly louder. Sam had been able to keep track of how close it was by the flustered clouds of birds that erupted from the trees as it passed. He could hear it behind him now, close enough that he decided it was time to stop moving and make a stand.

Sam stashed the phone and tossed the backpack aside and out of his way, and drew out his gun. He faced back the way he'd come, and finally saw it: something big and dark, hurtling up the slope on all fours. It was big, long enough to be a really fucking huge bear, but not nearly heavy enough and it moved way too fast.

He sighted down the gun, waited for it to pass between a stand of trees blocking his view, and fired.

The thing dodged, and when he fired again it dodged again. It put trees and logs and rocks between itself and Sam, ducking from cover to cover faster than Sam could aim and shoot, and when it finally broke into the open and came at him it had somehow feinted to his right. It tackled him from the side; the gun flew from his hand as they hit the ground.

For a long, terrifying moment the thing was a stinking, immovable, suffocating weight on him. One arm was trapped beneath him, so he beat on it one-handedly, shoving ineffectually against its bulk. As soon as it shifted Sam got his other arm free, clasped his hands together and swung double-fisted at its head.

Strong hands captured his arms and slammed them back onto the ground.

_Hands. _

Sam looked up into the hairy, filthy face of the thing pinning him down. It was broad across the forehead and flat across the nose, and frighteningly wild-eyed, but it was also, inarguably, a _man's_ face.

It grinned with a mouth full of yellow teeth and then stood, dragging Sam to his feet.

The thing towered over him, taller by at least a head and shoulders, which was not something that had happened to Sam since about his junior year of high school. He jerked against the grip on his arms and kicked hard at its knees and shins, but the thing just stood there and grinned and didn't let go.

Sam had a sudden thought. He glanced down, verified his hunch, and kicked it in the nuts.

It howled, grin turning into a grimace of rage and pain. It did let him go then, but he didn't have time to do much more than stagger back a couple of steps before it swung at him.

It was like being hit in the face by a log. Head ringing, Sam hardly felt himself hit the ground. One of those huge hands clamped around his throat, lifted him up off the ground and shook him furiously like a rag doll before flinging him at the base of a tree.

He gasped for breath as the thing took him by the ankle and started dragging him back down the hill, away from the river. It barked out wordless, angry sounds, and Sam wondered a little hysterically if it was cussing him out in Sasquatch.

Visions of himself hanging by the feet in the thing's cave like Luke Skywalker in _The Empire Strikes Back_ ran through his head, and he grabbed at trees and rocks for leverage to help pull himself free. When that didn't work he rolled onto his back and aimed for the back of its knee with his free foot. He managed just enough force to make the thing stumble; he followed up with a boot to the creature's ass and it flew forward, fumbling its grip on his leg just enough for him to kick loose.

It tumbled head over heels down the incline. Sam scrambled to the hilltop and tore frantically through the undergrowth on his hands and knees looking for the gun. He found it just as the thing roared and started barreling back up the hill toward him.

This time it was mad and it didn't bother taking the zigzagging route from cover to cover in favor of making a beeline for Sam. This time Sam held the gun close and waited until it was almost right on him.

The first shot took it in the shoulder, the second in the chest. It cried out, a chilling, human sound, and Sam's third shot missed, barely, as it toppled backwards.

Catching itself on a tree as it fell, it regained its footing almost immediately. It didn't come back for more of the fight, though. With almost as much speed as it had shown in chasing him down, it turned and ran.

Sam watched until it was out of sight, and listened until the crashing and the keening wail faded away in the distance. Then he staggered to the nearest tree, collapsed against it and tried to catch his breath.

*

Giant, saber-toothed purple squirrels chased Dean out of sleep. He gasped; his eyes flew open and he would have shot straight up in bed -- if he had been in bed, and if he hadn't been tied down. Daylight blinded him and he squeezed his eyes shut.

From the grit beneath his hands, the stones digging into his back through his t-shirt, and the sound of the river rushing around the rocky bend, he knew he was still on the gravel bar from the night before. He could hear movement nearby, rustling sounds, and the muffled ringing of his phone.

His phone. Had to be Sam calling him. Which meant that whatever had gotten him last night hadn't gotten Sam, and also meant that Sam had made it through the night well enough to be able to call at all.

Dean blew out a long, relieved breath. Now all he had to worry about was himself. He opened his eyes again, squinting as he got used to the light. His head throbbed and he was completely parched, flushed with heat and sweating so much he could feel his clothes sticking to him. Other than that, he seemed to be fine. Well, other than that and being tied to the ground, but, one thing at a time.

As soon as he could keep his eyes open without them watering against the gleaming sun, and with as little movement as possible, he looked around.

He was right about still being on the gravel bar, but that was the only thing he saw that he expected. He saw no tent. No canoes, coolers, or fishing poles. No burned-out campfire. No people. No indication at all, in fact, that anyone had been there, ever.

"What the fuck -- whoa!"

A head appeared above him, and big, round, shining black eyes set in a little green-tinged face peered into his.

The creature was tiny, elfin, like a skinny, bald child. It crouched at his head, bracing itself on spindly arms, and stared at him.

"Uh," he said. "Hi there, little guy."

Flashing him a sudden smile full of tiny, needle-sharp teeth, it chirped, "Purple squirrel! Purple squirrel!" and whirled away laughing.

He lifted his head and looked down the length of himself. He was outlined by little stakes pounded into the rocky sand, pinned down by rough cord that criss-crossed his body from stake to stake, from his shoulders to his knees.

Another of the elf-creatures danced into view. It stopped where he could see it and, with an evil half-smile, showed him what it held: an old, dirty beer bottle. The label had long since peeled off, and it looked like it had been dredged up out of the river. For the space of a blink, Dean saw one of the men from the night before standing in the place of the elf, and the elf said in a voice way too deep for its little body,

"You're really gullible, aren't you."

Then the illusion was gone and the elf shrieked with laughter and poured the contents of the bottle out onto the beach. The liquid smoked as it hit the ground.

"Crap," Dean said, and strained against the cords.

The elves ignored his struggles, prancing around and splashing in the shallow water, laughing and quoting bits of conversation from the night before.

Slowly, slowly a few of the stakes beside his legs started to wiggle. He twisted his hips and his legs, and finally felt the cords loosening.

The two elves had linked arms and were standing on a rock by the river singing the beer song. A third wandered up to him then, dragging his tattered and mostly empty backpack. It watched him squirm, its gaze fixed on his thrashing feet. As it watched, it let go of the backpack, crouched slowly down, and then pounced.

"Hey!" Dean waggled the foot it had landed on, but it clung fast, chewing on his boot laces. He tried whacking his feet together, and finally it tumbled off.

Next thing he knew, it had yanked his boot off, pounced on his foot again, and chomped down on his big toe.

"Son of a _bitch_!" He heaved with all of his strength, and the cords holding his legs down snapped free. He kicked the elf off his foot, but in the time it took to start thrashing against the remaining cords, all three of the little bastards were on him.

They shrieked and scratched and bit him. He flailed, yelling and fighting to keep them off his face and away from his eyes. Just as one of his arms came free an elf sunk its teeth into his shoulder. He grabbed another as it took a frightening, calculated dive toward his lap and used it to bludgeon the one off of his shoulder.

He grabbed that one, too, and hauled himself to his feet. The remaining elf rushed him; he met it with a kick that sent it flying into the trees.

"Ow! God dammit!" He threw an elf as hard as he could out over the river. The fuckers weren't heavy, and it easily sailed the short distance across the water and hit the cliff wall on the other side with a satisfying thud. He pried the other from where it had attached itself to his wrist with its teeth and slung it out into the water, too.

He spun around, expecting the one he'd launched into the woods to come screaming out at him. It didn't; nothing moved in the trees at all. He spun around again, hearing squealing and splashing coming from the river, and caught a glimpse of the other two floundering away down stream.

"Yeah," he shouted. "You better run!"

He bent over, bracing his hands on his thighs while he took deep breaths. His head still pounded and now his arms and hands stung from tiny bites and scratches.

"Wonderful," he muttered.

He dragged on his mangled boot, knotting the remains of his boot strings as best as he could. He knew the next time he had to run or fight he was going to come right out of the boot, but this way at least he wouldn't have to walk barefoot through the forest.

He found the rest of his things scattered from the water's edge to the tree line. His backpack was trashed, so he used what was left of it to tie most of the stuff up in a bundle. He clipped the GPS onto his belt and tucked his gun away in its usual spot.

His phone he found last, in a patch of ferns. He grimaced when he saw the fifty plus missed calls from Sam. He expected righteous fury when he called back, and got it.

"Where the _hell_ have you been?"

Dean held the phone away from his ear.

"It's nine-thirty! I've been calling you since six!"

"Dude, chill the fuck out," he snapped. "I've been tied up on a beach like fucking Gulliver, is where I've been."

"What?"

"Elves. Goddamned little bitty green elves." He eased stiffly down onto a fallen tree at the forest's edge, dropped the bundled pack at his feet and massaged his aching temples. "They drugged me and tied me up and tried to eat my toes."

"What?"

"Elves, Sam. Elves!" How difficult was this to understand? "That's what we're fucking dealing with here. Motherfucking _elves_."

"Elves? But. Okay, but, not just elves."

Dean's turn: "What?"

"I just got my ass handed to me by bigfoot, man."

"Bigfoot?" What? "Are you serious? I mean, you sure it wasn't an elf?"

"Big. Foot. _Big_foot. As in, _huge_. It was not a freaking elf. It probably would have dragged me off to its cave for lunch if I hadn't managed to shoot it."

Dean clutched his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to think. "Bigfoot. And elves."

"And a black dog."

Dean felt a chill run through him. "Black dog as in --"

"As in the apparition of a big black dog with glowing red eyes. The death omen."

Dean was starting to feel dizzy. This job was supposed to be nothing, just the two of them poking around probably not finding a damn thing, and definitely not finding a damn thing that would kill them. "Sam..."

"I don't know if it was exactly real, though. I mean, not a real death omen. Did those elves try to kill you?"

"What? Well, they tied me up. And chewed on me a little."

"Just screwing around with you?"

He thought about the little fuckers dancing around singing the beer song, and then running away as soon as he got loose. "Maybe. I guess so."

"I'm pretty sure the bigfoot was just screwing around with me, too, until I kicked it in the balls and made it mad. I think that whatever is out there sending these things to us might just be trying to scare us away, you know? Like the other victims."

Dean dropped his hand. "You kicked bigfoot in the balls?"

A strangled sound came across the line. "Not the point, Dean."

"Yeah, but -- okay, okay." Sam was right; there would be plenty of time to tease him mercilessly about it later. "Just trying to scare us, huh?"

Under the late morning sun and the clear blue sky, the woods were bright and green and inviting. Birds darted in the treetops, and birdsong mixed with the burbling of the water behind him. He thought about the elves dancing around him like toddlers riding a sugar high, and had to admit that very little about the scenario overall gave off an evil, dangerous vibe.

Except for the black dog.

"You think whatever it is behind these attacks might get in the killing mood if we don't go away?"

Sam sighed. "I don't know. But we told the Kleiners we'd find out what was out there. You want to go back and tell them we couldn't do it?"

The way Sam said it, Dean could tell he didn't mean it as a challenge; he was just thinking out loud, bringing up the options as he saw them. Still, it pinged something in Dean's gut.

"Like hell," he said. "What I want to do is find this thing and kick its ass for fucking around with us."

Sam huffed a short laugh. "Yeah, I thought you'd say that."

"On the other hand -- " A flicker of movement caught the corner of Dean's eye. He stood fast, drew his gun faster, and froze.

It was neither an elf nor a bigfoot; this time it was a snow white goat, completely normal except that it stood on its extremely bowed hind legs and had oversized floppy ears and human arms. It looked ridiculous.

"Sam?" he said into the phone. "I got something...different, here."

*

Sam held the gun steady, regardless of how harmless she looked.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "Me too."

She had just stepped out from behind a tree at the edge of the fallow field, and now she stood there, watching him. She was lovely. Not gorgeous or striking, just...lovely. Her long, light red hair was tucked behind her ears, and a spray of freckles stood out on her pale, delicate nose. She had kind eyes, and half a smile on her lips despite the gun in her face.

"What have you got?" Dean asked.

"A girl."

"A girl? You got a _girl_? I got a frigging goat boy." Dean paused. "Is she pretty?"

Sam felt a little nauseous. "Yeah," he managed. "She's pretty."

At that, the girl's expression shifted from friendly to confused. She lifted a hand and looked at it, and touched her face and hair. Then her eyebrows drew together and she frowned at Sam.

"This isn't working," she said.

*

The goat boy looked down at its hooves and stamped the ground, and poked itself in the nose experimentally. Then it dropped its strange man-hands to its goat hips and said,

"This isn't working."

*

A reply came to them through the forest like a sigh, an exhalation that stretched the world in front of both Sam and Dean like a rubber band. The trees, the river and the sky grew thinner and thinner. Sam watched his hand, still out in front of him holding the gun, vanish into the distance at the end of an arm that distended like pulled-apart Silly Putty. Dean dove for his ruined backpack as it shot away from him on earth that became suddenly fluid.

And then the world inhaled, and the rubber band snapped.

*

Dean tripped over his pack -- still somehow at his feet -- and landed on his face in the mat of damp leaves covering the forest floor.

He put his hands out to push himself up, but jerked them back as a pair of boots came a hair's width from stepping on them. The boots clipped Dean's shoulder instead, and he heard Sam grunt as he fell.

Shoving Sam's legs off his back, Dean got to his knees.

"Sam! You all right?"

Sam sat on the ground staring in horror at his empty hand. Dean caught him by the wrist and gently drew the hand over and inspected it.

"What happened?" he asked. The hand looked fine. Sam's face, on the other hand, was black and blue all down one side, and blood was drying beneath his nose. "How bad are you hurt?"

Flexing his fingers, Sam slowly shook his head. "I'm okay. I'm okay. I think." Suddenly he squinted up at Dean. "Hey. Wait a minute."

Dean rolled his eyes and slapped Sam on the shoulder as he stood. "Take your time catching up, Ace."

They were in a little clearing outside a cave. The air was cool, a shock of chill against Dean's sweaty skin that made him shudder. A steady trickle of water spilled from the cave into a deep, clear pool, and then swirled away through the woods in a fast-moving stream.

On a wide stone beside the pool sat an ancient woman. Her wrinkled face and thin arms were a deep, rich blue, and her white hair was tangled and wild. Full but ratty skirts didn't quite hide heavy-booted feet. A huge black bird perched on one shoulder, eyeing him and Sam like they were dead meat that only needed to rot a little more before they'd make a decent meal.

It was a strange tableau, but by far the most disturbing thing about it was the fact that Dean's gun and, he assumed, Sam's were tucked into the dirty yellow sash that cinched the old woman's skirts around her waist.

She saw Dean realize she had their weapons, and bared her teeth in something that was not quite a smile.

"The two of you certainly know how to ruin a good plan," she said.

He glanced at Sam, who twitched a shoulder in a shrug.

"Beg your pardon?" Dean said.

"The set up was pretty good, didn't you think? Keeping you separate, far away from each other, lost and alone. Sending some of my own to wind you up a bit."

A round of muffled snickers floated up from beneath her skirts; the edge of her skirt hitched and two little faces set with big eyes and pointy smiles peeked out. Dean glared at them.

"The best part, though, the grand finale should have been taken care of by the bwagonods."

The goat boy and a luminous red-haired girl materialized beside the old woman. Dean felt Sam start beside him, and as they watched the girl's features faded until a twin of Dean's goat boy stood in her place.

"Bwaganods are shape-changers," the old woman said. "They read your fears and show them to you. An effective conclusion, yes? Send you screaming away from your nightmare come to life." She waved a hand, as if trying to brush them out of her sight. "And you would be gone, and never bother me again."

She looked at Sam. "But at the heart of your deepest terror is a beautiful, innocent girl. Not the girl in pain, and not the girl ravaged by death. Just the girl, alive and whole, at the moment before it all falls apart. Tragic." She seemed not to notice Sam go pale as she scowled at him. "Not really _scary_, though."

"And you." She turned accusing eyes on Dean. "The stuff of your darkest nightmares can't even be rendered physically at all."

Dean swallowed hard and tried to think of something to say, but her words had triggered some suicidal instinct to bring up a mental list of everything that scared the living shit out of him in order to figure out which was the worst, and it was all he could do to put a lid on it before he threw up on the old bitch's shoes.

"So. You wanted to come into my woods, and I couldn't make you leave," she said. She lifted her hands and the goat boys took them and helped her gently to her feet. "Now you're here. Now you have seen me." She held out her arms in a gesture that would have been regal had she not been so bent and ragged. The bird on her shoulder spread its wings and shrieked a loud caw. "Now you boys tell me. What should we do next?"

"You could give me my gun back and then ask me that again." Dean had been going for bravado, but the words fell flat. And, as if to underline just how empty his implied threat was, he heard the snap of branches and the crunch of brush being trampled under foot, and turned to see a towering, fur-covered man lumber out of the forest behind them. The fur all down one side of him was matted with what looked like blood, but he didn't move like he was in pain. He moved like a royally pissed off giant.

Sam looked back, too, and his eyes widened. He didn't flinch or comment, though; instead he slowly turned his back on the thing and faced the old woman again. "We came here to find out what was going on," he said. "People who live around here are scared because of the strange things that happen here."

"Why?" the woman demanded. "We never hurt anyone." When Sam raised an eyebrow and tilted his head, putting his battered face on display, she cackled. "Can you blame him?"

"Well," Sam glanced over his shoulder. "Okay. Point. But, look, you're standing there telling us that you go out of your way to terrify people, and I'm telling you, it's worked. They're scared, and they're worried that people will start dying, and they're wondering if it's time to break out the pitchforks and torches and automatic weapons. And honestly, can you blame them?"

Dean smirked. Most of the time he thought Sam was wasting his time when he tried to reason with the spooks and spirits they dealt with. It was working on this old broad, though. She had crossed her arms over her chest and was gazing at Sam speculatively.

"It's scary," he said under his breath, "How good a lawyer you probably would have been."

"Shut up," Sam muttered back.

After a long silence the woman said, thoughtfully, "I am not a killer, boy. I just am."

When she didn't elaborate, Dean said, "Okay. And that's supposed to mean what, exactly?"

"It's a riddle," she snapped. "Try to keep up, Ace."

Dean bit back a smart ass reply. He leaned in to Sam and asked, "Any ideas?"

"Um." Sam stared bluntly at the woman, cataloguing her appearance. His gaze drifted, taking in the goat boys, the pool, and finally the cave and a tall holly tree that grew at its entrance. "Maybe," he said quietly to Dean, and then, more loudly, to the old woman, said --

\-- said something that made absolutely no sense to Dean.

The woman stared, so Dean did too.

"Huh?" he said.

Sam shifted uncomfortably. "I'm not very good with, uh, Gaelic pronunciation. The modern British term is Blue Hag. Also known as Black Annis, or the Stone Woman."

The woman eyed him. "That's who you think I am?"

"Yes." Sam gestured at her. "I mean, for starters, you're blue. And dressed in rags. You have a raven on your shoulder." He pointed to the holly tree. "Holly trees aren't native to the Missouri woodlands, but if you were Black Annis you'd need one nearby, because between the end and the beginning of winter you have to bury your staff -- made of holly wood -- beneath it."

The goat boys had started to fidget, and when Dean checked on the bigfoot his angry stance had shifted to uncertainty.

"Your people look a little nervous, lady," he said. "I think maybe we know a little more about you than you'd like." He didn't point out the fact that Sam was looking a little nervous, too; he hoped the woman would maybe just not notice.

"Do you always carry around so much useless information in your head?" she asked Sam.

Sam's ears turned pink. He cleared his throat and said, "Well. Yeah. Pretty much."

"Then finish the story," she told him. "Tell your brother the rest of it. Tell him why neither you nor anyone else, regardless of pitchforks or guns, can do anything about me."

Dean looked from her to Sam. "That doesn't sound good."

"Yeah." Sam scratched his ear nervously. "Basically, Black Annis is an old Celtic...goddess."

"Okay. But we've dealt with old gods before. Find her source of power and..."

Sam shook his head. "She was the goddess of winter. The source of her power is _winter_, Dean."

Dean waved a hand, a gesture encompassing the green woods, the humidity, the entire heat-exhausted state of Missouri in July. "And it's _summer_, Sam."

"Not everywhere. In any given place winter comes and goes, but metaphysically speaking the potential for winter is always there, and it can't be destroyed. Which means -- "

"I can't be destroyed."

It could have been another illusion, but as she let her words sink in, her withered, frail body seemed to straighten a little, strengthen somehow. She still looked like she'd have a hard time killing a fly, but she and her creatures had made a life and a home in these woods by taking advantage of the way that looks could deceive.

Dean was thinking it, but Sam said it out loud first.

"-- which means we might be screwed."

*

"Okay, you know what? I don't care if it's made with zucchini. This is fucking amazing pie." Dean punctuated the statement by shoveling another forkful into his mouth. He slouched more deeply on the rest-stop bench, closing his eyes blissfully as he chewed. He held the half empty pie plate cradled in his arm.

Sam folded up the map and stretched his legs out the open car door. "You think it's amazing enough for a retired goddess?"

Dean said something around his mouth full of pie that sounded like "Absolutely." Sam tended to agree.

They had gone back to Kamp Kwitcherbitchin and explained about Black Annis to the Kleiners. She was a goddess the world no longer needed, Sam told them, and she had settled in their woods centuries ago. He repeated what she had said, that she, like winter, was not a killer; she just...was. She and the little group of supernatural creatures who sought her protection only wanted to be left alone, and scaring the living daylights out of people seemed to work the best.

They also passed on a message: that if people wanted her to leave, they could come to her woods, with weapons if it made them feel safer, and shout their request to the trees, and she would be gone. There were plenty of places she could go, and it would be more trouble than it was worth to kill for that little plot of land.

Gene Kleiner had stared at them for a moment when they finished their story, and then shook his head. "You boys might be bullshitting us, and I might have been born yesterday, but okay. That explains a lot, anyway." He had knocked back a beer and gone on shaking his head. "No way in hell anybody's going to believe _me_, though."

Mrs. Kleiner had risen silently from her chair and made her slow way to the kitchen.

"Ma?" Gene had called.

She had turned, her expression a little sad but full of purpose. "That poor woman. Out there with just those creatures for company all of these years."

"Hey, now. You ain't going out there, Ma."

"Hell I am." She'd continued shuffling toward the kitchen. "I think she'd like one of my pies, too."

She'd made enough to send a couple with Sam and Dean when they left. Gene had offered them a four-pack of pretty expensive German lager as a thank you, too, but Dean had surprised Sam by turning him down flat. He still wouldn't explain why, either.

"You figure out where we're going?" Dean asked.

Sam tossed the map up onto the dashboard and got out of the car to stretch out the rest of him. "Yeah." His ribs twinged a little from the fight with the bigfoot when he rolled his shoulders back. He was still a little weirded out that he'd won that fight.

He still wondered a little about the black dog, too. It had been on the tip of his tongue to ask Black Annis if she really had sent it, but he hadn't. He'd decided he really didn't want to know.

"That was a pretty good hunt, wasn't it?" he said. Dean shot him a look. "I just mean...we got to talk to an ancient Celtic goddess. And we didn't have to kill anything."

Dean froze briefly with the fork halfway to his mouth. It was just a flinch, and he corrected smoothly and continued eating as if Sam hadn't just thrown a wet blanket over everything, but Sam still felt stupid for what he'd said. He looked away from Dean, out across the forested hills.

Certain things about his and Dean's lives didn't get easier over time, and it still wasn't the life Sam wanted, not by a long shot. On the other hand, they got to see and experience things most people never did, and while most of them sucked he thought that maybe he should try to appreciate the things that didn't. It seemed wrong, anyway, wasteful, to let the good things fade away just so he could wallow in his own unhappiness.

He didn't know how to explain that, though, in a way that wouldn't end up with Dean making fun of him, or worse, getting all quiet and closed off.

Dean's voice broke through Sam's thoughts. "I liked the river."

He shrugged when Sam looked at him.

"It was nice. Pretty. Kinda soothing. There was this little turtle that..." He made a vague gesture with his fork. "Anyway. I'm just saying, yeah. The part where I got to hang out on the river was nice. And, okay, the benevolent if totally batshit ancient goddess thing was kind of cool, too."

Sam snorted.

"I mean that very sincerely, Sam. We are very lucky to have met a completely whackjob old geezer who sicced her demonic baby elves and naked sasquatch on us."

Which, Sam was pretty sure, was Dean's way of saying he got it.

He didn't want to ruin the moment by grinning like a dork, though, so he plastered on a fake glare.

"Okay, fine, be that way." He flopped down on the bench beside Dean and snagged the pie plate. "Let me have some pie."

"Hey! Get your own."

"I kicked the sasquatch's naked ass, Dean. Share. The pie."

"Oh please. He was just sent to scare you, he probably wasn't even trying." Dean glowered, but offered the fork anyway. "But since you asked so nicely, we can share the pie."

*

**Author's Note:**

> _1._ [Mock Apple Zucchini pie](http://hl2.bappy.com/zucchinipie.html) is really good. An acquaintance recommended it after having it at a campground called (drum roll) Kamp Kwitcherbitchin, where the wife of the guy who owned the place had made some fresh and was inclined to share.  
> _2._ Everything Dean sees and hears at the campsite during the night I got from hanging out with friends during camp-outs. That includes the butchered version of Homer Simpson's beer song, by the way. Said friends can never remember the words past 'La'. Camping with them can be weird, but man, the food is always _fantastic_.  
> _3._ There have in fact been [Black Dog](http://nli.northampton.ac.uk/ass/psych-staff/sjs/blackdog.htm) sightings in [Missouri](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_dog), of all places; and Missouri's own bigfoot is known as Momo (the [Missouri Monster](http://www.bigfootencounters.com/creatures/momo.htm)).  
> _4._ The name that Sam couldn't pronounce was [Cailleac Bhuer](http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4611/fairyC.html), or [Cailleach Bheara](http://www.blueroebuck.com/cailleach_bera.htm); I probably couldn't pronounce it right, either.   
> _5._ I borrowed the title from a [really funny book](http://www.amazon.com/Walk-Woods-Rediscovering-Appalachian-Official/dp/0767902521/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-1820874-1299633?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183038787&sr=1-1) by Bill Bryson. Hopefully he wouldn't mind.


End file.
